The Near Miss

The Near Miss

TheLinguist was in town recently and we had a lovely albeit brief catch up.

We had planned to have a longer play date along with seeing a show which was on during his visit, but alas our plans were thwarted….

No less than 20 minutes from receiving his last message where he mentioned counting down to seeing me, TheLinguist stated in a panic “Hey – we have a huge problem. Have you got a number I can call you on?”.

Numbers aren’t something typically exchanged out of safety of getting directly caught out and at this stage I had absolutely no inkling of what the huge problem might be. I trusted TheLinguist enough to be careful with calling my number, so I gave it to him although he acknowledged it was unconventional to our situation.

My phone rang shortly after that and on reflection of the call, he actually sounded very calm. TheLinguist’s wife had just called him and asked what he was up to for the evening, to which I think he said he told her he was chilling or going to a show….then she dropped the bombshell that she’d decided to surprise him as it was the weekend. TheLinguist’s wife had landed in my city and was enroute to his apartment, where I had been briefly only just the previous evening.

My only reaction was to laugh about the incredulous luck we’d had that she hadn’t arrived half an hour later when I quite likely would have been there.

After hanging up from the call, TheLinguist messaged me “Fuuuuuuuuuuck”. “FUCK”.

Fortunately I hadn’t left any of my belongings behind and he managed to clean the apartment of any evidence of my presence with 15 minutes to spare.